The Longer Bodies (19 page)

Great-aunt Puddequet's bathchair was in the hall, but its owner was not with it. Shrill squeals of objurgation which proceeded from the nearest opening indicated that she was in the morning room.

‘But, indeed, dear Mrs Puddequet,' protested poor Miss Caddick's tearful voice, ‘poor Mr Kost did go with him to the lecture, but he left him on the way home to go into the public house for his stout. Poor man! He said he couldn't sleep without his stout! How could he know that somebody would—would kill Mr Anthony?'

Miss Caddick ended on a loud sob.

‘You're a fool, Companion Caddick,' retorted old Mrs Puddequet, even more spiritedly than usual. ‘Go and find Joseph Herring. He must act as attendant this morning. You can't go out looking like that. What was my wretched grandson to you, I'd like to know, or Hobson either, that you must be sobbing and sighing over them like a great baby! We shall all die some time, I suppose!'

Miss Caddick emerged from the room, and almost cannoned into the two who stood in the hall, for the light was dim after the brilliance of the morning room, which was flooded with sunshine and, besides, she was still weeping.

Without a word Richard tapped on the door, and ushered Mrs Bradley into the room. Old Mrs Puddequet was reclining on the settee. She blinked her tigerish yellow eyes at Mrs Bradley, and held out a much-beringed claw nearly as yellow as Mrs Bradley's own.

‘I don't know who you are,' she observed concisely, ‘and to be a friend of Richard Cowes is not recommendation in this house'—she cast a malevolent glance at her grandnephew—‘but you've a sensible face and I like the look of you. Pray be seated.'

Richard hastily dragged forward a chair, which Mrs Bradley took with a graceful inclination of the head.

‘I suppose you've heard about my murders,' said old Mrs Puddequet. ‘Very interesting.'

‘Very,' agreed Mrs Bradley. Black eyes met yellow eyes for a full thirty seconds. ‘No, I thought you didn't,' said black eyes to the brain behind them.

At this instant Miss Caddick returned and informed her employer that Joseph Herring was just washing his hands, and that the inspector was outside the door and would be glad of a short interview.

‘Bother the man,' observed Great-aunt Puddequet with vigour. ‘Show him in.'

Mrs Bradley and Richard Cowes quietly withdrew.

‘Is there a public library in Market Longer?' asked Mrs Bradley, when they gained the hall once more. ‘And a local newspaper office?'

‘Both,' replied Richard. ‘Are you going to incorporate a psychological analysis of my aunt in your next book?'

‘As to that,' replied Mrs Bradley solemnly, ‘I can't say. But I have been visited'—she lowered her voice —‘by a Great Thought.'

‘And what is that?' enquired Richard Cowes deferentially.

‘Well,' replied Mrs Bradley, leading him out on to the terrace, ‘when one visits friends in the country, one is always taken to see the animals on the estate in the following order: the horses, pigs, dogs, pigeons, fowls, ducks—'

‘Rabbits,' supplied Richard, as she paused for a second.

Mrs Bradley, who had paused deliberately for him to make the suggestion, opened her black eyes and cackled with joy.

‘Rabbits!' she exclaimed. ‘Childhood! Tom and Maggie Tulliver! Captain Cook!
Alice in Wonderland!
A present on the first day of the month! How delightfully, innocently, superbly rural!'

Richard Cowes beamed with pleasure, and adjusted his pince-nez self-consciously.

‘I myself will conduct you,' he said. ‘Horses? I know nothing about them. Pigs? Faugh! Dogs? I have a great respect for dogs. Very intelligent animals, I believe. But, if rabbits delight you, to the rabbits we will go.'

They went.

The Scrounger was now seated on an upturned bucket in quiet enjoyment of a cigarette. He scowled at the visitors, but, considerably mollified by the surreptitious present of half a crown, which Richard slid into his ever-ready palm, he took out his charges, and at great length, and with praiseworthy accuracy, commented upon and displayed their points.

‘And which are the two you are taking care of for Colonel Digot?' enquired Mrs Bradley, with dreadful clearness.

The Scrounger swallowed twice and looked past her. Then he caught her eye.

‘Come, come, Joseph,' said Mrs Bradley, with a grin which made him shudder. ‘You don't want to be arrested for murder, do you?'

The wretched Joseph wilted, and swore softly to steady his nerves.

‘You were out for an unlawful purpose on the night Jacob Hobson was murdered,' said Mrs Bradley relentlessly. That this fact was known to all the people in England who took the trouble to peruse the daily papers escaped Joseph for a flabbergasted instant, and he grew red with anguish.

‘I—I never said I wasn't, did I?' gulped the ornament of many defaulters' parades.

‘Luckily for you, you did not,' said Mrs Bradley crisply. ‘You admit that on the night of April eighteenth you did feloniously purloin or steal some portable property belonging or appertaining to Colonel Digot, J.P.—viz., to wit, one rabbit—don't you? Which one was it? Show me.'

Joseph showed her.

‘Very well,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Again, on the night of Monday, April twenty-eighth, the night when Mr Timon Anthony was murdered, you went again to Colonel Digot's kitchen garden and stole a second rabbit. Joseph, I put it to you. You are a hard-working, trustworthy, intelligent man—'

The Scrounger, who was none of these things, and had never been called them before except in company with several hundred other persons, and then only at political meetings, straightened his shoulders and flung out his chest.

‘And you are aware,' continued Mrs Bradley, noting these manifestations with secret amusement, ‘that on the face of it your conduct must look, to say the very least, unpleasantly suspicious. One thing, and one thing only, will divert this suspicion. Joseph, why did you
need
to steal two rabbits? Tell me that. Are you a collector of rabbits? Do you yearn after them? Have you a secret craving for them, or what?'

The Scrounger cleared his throat and his eyes wandered glassily towards the nearest treetop. Mrs Bradley, who knew a liar when she saw one, added swiftly:

‘And don't say that. It isn't true.'

Richard Cowes had grown weary of the lecture on rabbits, and had wandered through the gate of the kitchen garden and back to the sports ground, so that the two of them were alone.

‘'Ere—' began Joseph belligerently; but then thought better of it.

‘Somebody niked a Belgian 'are and a Flemish Giant off me, and I dursen't let the old lady know, so I 'as to replace 'em, see? And that's the truth, it is.'

‘I believe you, Joseph,' said Mrs Bradley magnificently. ‘More. The day you furnish me with information—correct information, please, Joseph! —as to the identity of the person or persons who stole your rabbits from you, I will give you a pound note. Further, if you can discover, not invent, Joseph! —you understand the difference, don't you?—the reason why they were stolen, and the use, if any, to which they were afterwards put, I'll make it thirty shillings. And now go and take Mrs Puddequet out for a nice walk.'

‘
WHEN IN THE
country, take part in as many country pursuits and diversions as possible,' said Margaret Digot on Wednesday, 30th April. She glanced mischiev-ously at Mrs Bradley. ‘We always go to the fair at Hilly Longer on May Day,' she added, ‘and that's tomorrow. Would you care to come with us? Of course, it's not what it used to be, but we rather enjoy it.'

‘Let us go,' replied Mrs Bradley promptly. ‘I will throw wooden balls at coconuts. Do you like coconuts?'

‘I always think I do until I begin eating a bit of one,' said Margaret. ‘Do you mind if Priscilla Yeomond comes with us? They're sick of their murders and policemen and things, and she says she would like a change of scene.'

Mrs Bradley assented with enthusiasm, and also fell in with the further suggestion that she should accompany her hostess's daughter as far as Longer in order to fetch Priscilla.

‘Of course,' said Margaret when they were upon the road, ‘I dare say the other girl, the cousin, will come too, and several of the boys. You don't mind going about in gangs, I hope?'

Mrs Bradley expressed immense pleasure at the idea of going about in gangs, and added that she hoped it would be a fine day. As a matter of fact, she hoped for rain, for, as she explained later to the silent Rex, who accompanied them, there was nothing like a little heavy rain on a little light summer clothing to bring out the worst aspects of human nature.

‘And one of them, or two of them, or, possibly, three of them committed murder a short time ago, child,' she added, with a chuckle of ghoulish glee, ‘and I must know who and why.'

‘I'm afraid,' replied Rex sombrely, ‘that a fair on the first of May is not the most promising place for your purpose.'

‘That's where you show yourself to be in error, child,' said Mrs Bradley, with immense complaisance. ‘The great thing is to get them all to come with us. Do you think it can be managed?'

‘All?' said Margaret, who had been calling her dog from a field, and who now rejoined them on the road.

‘Certainly, my dear,' said Mrs Bradley. She dived into the capacious pocket of her tweed skirt and drew from the depths a small notebook, from which she proceeded to read the names of old Mrs Puddequet's nephews, nieces, and trainer.

‘I should like to have had the enterprising rabbit-tamer with us also,' she added, closing the little book and returning it to the limbo whence it had emerged, ‘but, the social customs of the country being what they are instead of what Clive Brown-Jenkins would like them to be, I suppose we must do the best we can with the material which is supplied to us.'

‘How do you know Clive Brown-Jenkins is a Socialist?' demanded Margaret.

‘Is he one?' enquired Mrs Bradley, with a hideous grimace at Rex.

The remainder of the walk was occupied by a discussion on Bernard Shaw, carried on exclusively by the brother and sister. One of them walked on one side of the road and the other on the opposite side, for they were of an age when arguments appear to gain in significance by being shouted across an intervening space. Mrs Bradley occupied the centre of the way, and whiled away the time by reciting under her breath short lyrics from the better-known modern poets as she walked along.

‘At any rate, you can't get away from
Heartbreak House
,' bellowed Margaret as they arrived at the gates of Longer.

‘“In thee, in me,”' concluded Mrs Bradley, with serious pleasure, as Rex opened the gates for her to pass through.

The first person they encountered upon entering the grounds was Great-aunt Puddequet herself. The bathchair, propelled by Miss Caddick, who looked taller, whiter, and more angular than ever, halted abruptly, and Great-aunt Puddequet stuck the ferrule of her umbrella firmly into the gravel path, and squealed raucously at Margaret.

‘Why have you brought people to lunch? You know I have nothing but the lamb! The girl's a fool!'

‘We haven't come to lunch, dear Mrs Puddequet,' replied Margaret, in the soothing tones of chivalrous youth confronted by querulous and more-or-less ridiculous age.

‘This is Mrs Lestrange Bradley, the writer and psychoanalyst. I think you have met her, haven't you?'

‘Yesterday,' said Great-aunt Puddequet. She extended a parchment-coloured finger, heavily ringed, and pointed it at Mrs Bradley.

‘I have heard of your work,' she said. ‘More: I have read your books. Utter rubbish. How do you do?'

Mrs Bradley acknowledged this informal comment on her work with an appreciative leer which gave her never extraordinarily attractive countenance the expression of a satyr.

‘I hesitate to commit myself to sentimentality,' she observed, in her rich, deep, beautiful voice, ‘but my heart goes out to you, Mrs Puddequet. How you must have enjoyed the murders!'

Great-aunt Puddequet neighed shrilly like an excited horse. Then she placed a jewelled forefinger on her lips and gave a harelike glance backwards to remind her protagonist of the presence of the meek and humble Caddick behind the bathchair.

‘Margaret, my dear,' she squealed, ‘push the bathchair, child. Companion, be off. Will you never learn to rouge? Caesar said,' she added, as the unfortunate companion relinquished the responsibility of providing motive power for the bathchair, and hurried in the direction of the house—‘or one should say Shakespeare, I suppose, except that I don't know whether Shakespeare made Caesar say it or Caesar Shakespeare. You see my point, I hope? So much more profound, to my mind, the argument about authors and their characters. I hate the ancient, vulgar, hopelessly overdone Shakespeare-Bacon controversy.'

‘“Let me have men about me that are fat,”' interpolated Mrs Bradley, nodding her head vigorously. She removed her ridiculous hat, which made vigorous nodding a matter of some difficulty, and laid it at Great-aunt Puddequet's feet. The old lady kicked it tentatively and then ignored it completely.

‘How did you know that I was about to quote those words?' she enquired interestedly.

‘It was perfectly obvious from the context,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Why don't you make one of them practise throwing the javelin?' she enquired, with seeming irrelevance.

‘It was Timon's fault,' said old Mrs Puddequet, her yellow eyes flickering angrily. ‘Annoying of him to annoy me. Still, I prefer that Kost killed him rather than that he should have killed Kost,' she added. ‘Such a good trainer, and, of course, does no harm to the parrots at all.'

‘No, I suppose not,' said Mrs Bradley, sympathetically interpreting this train of thought. ‘That's what I think about golf. It's not a game for young children or clergymen, but at least the parrots take no harm from it. It's a comforting reflection, that.'